I wanted to put together a review of Fanduel since we already did our our DraftKings review and DRAFT review. You see these two advertised constantly on sports radio on SiriusXM or the Dan Patrick show to ESPN’s SportsCenter. Heck, I even heard the great Vin Scully talking about them on the Dodgers broadcast last week – they’re everywhere, but is FanDuel legit or is it just another fad that will die away in a couple of years? Let’s take a look.
First Impressions
If you’re comparing FanDuel to other daily fantasy sites like DraftKings, you’ll notice that the site is very user friendly and has a nice, clean layout that makes it easy to find where you’re going. The filters are organized nicely on the side so you can find the contests you’re looking for whether it’s head to head, 50/50 or a guaranteed prize pool (GPP) tournament. I especially like the slidebar that let’s you narrow down the dollar range, which is very helpful if you only want to play one dollar amount.
Depositing and Withdrawing Money
Depositing money is also very easy (naturally), you just click the green “Add Funds” button in the top right corner and you’ll be taken to the transactions page. To make a deposit you can use a credit card or your PayPal account. I used PayPal and my money was in my account in less than 30 seconds so there was no waiting and I was able to start playing almost instantly.
Withdrawing money from FanDuel was also very easy. To make a withdrawal click on your screen name in the top right corner (which triggers a drop down menu) and click Withdraw. Here you have two options… transfer to your PayPal account or get a check mailed to you. Since I’m impatient I used PayPal again and it was there in a day. The whole process was very easy and absolutely no hoops to jump through… I’m impressed.
Game Play
Available Contests
FanDuel features most of the major US sports like the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college football and basketball, but unlike DraftKings they don’t feature golf, MMA or soccer leagues (and neither site features NASCAR yet) so you’re going to be out of luck if you’re looking for those other sports. That said, FanDuel does a very good job with the sports they have and offer everything from free rolls to the recently announced $4 Million World Fantasy Baseball Championship.
Scoring
One of the things I like about FanDuel is that their scoring is extremely simplified. FanDuel’s fantasy football scoring is virtually identically to almost all leagues except they use 1/2 point PPR scoring to split the difference between PPR and Non PPR leagues. I go over the scoring and how you should tailor your team to it in our Fanduel strategy post. Their baseball scoring is also very simplified compared to other sites with pitchers scored only on Wins, Earned Runs, Strikeouts and Innings Pitched, and hitters scored on total bases, runs, RBI, steals and outs. If you’re a new DFS player this scoring setup is much easier to get started with.
Player Pricing
Of the major daily fantasy sites, FanDuel’s player pricing setup is definitely much easier for new DFS players as well, and makes it much easier to get players in to your lineup as opposed to a site like DraftKings which has more volatile player pricing which can make for some tough decisions on who you want to roster for that day’s games. Neither site releases their pricing system to the public (or people would find a way to game it) but FanDuel seems to be much more steady and predictable from day to day.
Setting Lineups
Setting a daily lineup on FanDuel is pretty straightforward. Players are sorted by position and you just click the green plus button to add a player or the red minus button to remove them. The site tells you how much money you have remaining in your salary cap and how much that amounts to on a per player basis. To narrow down your player selection you can also filter by game. I don’t like that it doesn’t allow you to filter by individual team or filter down to multiple games, but that’s a minor issue that I don’t have much problem working around.
Customer Service
As with DraftKings, I haven’t had many issues at all on the FanDuel site but just to test their customer service’s responsiveness I joined a contest and asked them to cancel my entry. They responded very quickly (within 10 minutes) and granted my request right away. I’d like to test them more in the future, but so far so good. (If you’ve worked with FanDuel’s customer service please let me know about your experience in the comments!)
Overall FanDuel Review
If you’re new and looking to get started playing daily fantasy sports, FanDuel is a very good place to start. The site is laid out very cleanly and is easy to use, the scoring system is more standard to the rest of the fantasy industry and their player pricing is very consistent. More advanced daily fantasy players might find FanDuel to be a bit too simple compared to other sites, and DFS players looking for games outside the big 4 US sports leagues will be disappointed, but overall FanDuel is one of the best daily fantasy sites going and I have no problem recommending them to everyone.
